چکیده انگلیسی

What are the components of a knowledge management (KM) capability and how do they impact firm performance? Based on prior research, we modeled a firm's KM capability in terms of its accumulations of stock – in the areas of human resources, technology infrastructures, and strategic templates – and regulation of flow, via institutionalization and internal and external learning processes. We then considered the extent to which these components complement one another in their impact on two types of firm performance – efficiency, based return on assets, and value creation, assessed as Tobin's q (the ratio of the capital market value of the firm to the replacement value of its assets). We posited differential types of stock-flow complementarities across these two performance outcomes over time – stable, positive effects on firm efficiency, synergistic complementarity, and initially positive, but subsequently negative effects on value creation, contingent complementarity. Data gathered from 218 Korean firms supported this premise. Implications for practice in the evolving fields of organizational capability and complementarities were explored.

مقدمه انگلیسی

Understanding a firm's knowledge management (KM) capability is essential to both efficient deployment of the firm's resources and growth of its value. Research has described components of a KM capability and demonstrated its impacts on firm performance [16]. However, a holistic picture of the structure and impacts of a KM capability has yet to emerge. How do components of a KM capability influence firm performance? Does the nature of the interaction differ for different aspects of firm performance? Do these effects change over time? These were the focal questions we addressed.
We consider the interaction among KM capability components through the lens of complementarity: this recognizes that valorization of activities in one realm is a function of commensurate activities – investments and/or supporting decisions – in other realms. Complementarity is the patterning of design elements that individually confer no, or limited, organizational advantage. Further, the inimitability of capabilities derives from complementarities. Competitive advantage occurs when the organization applies methods that are valuable to users but are difficult for others to duplicate. While complementarities have been visible in myriad areas [15], they have not been explored in the context of firms’ KM capabilities.
A lifecycle perspective of organizational capabilities suggests that capabilities are seldom valuable indefinitely [9]. Work by Gilbert [8] suggests that complementarity may be one mechanism by which capabilities decline over time. Specifically, the coupling inherent in complementarities makes it difficult to change them. In designing organizations and organizational capabilities, Argote et al. [2] suggested that “research is needed to identify dimensions of fit and to specify a priori when components fit each other and when they do not”.
We began our work by re-conceptualizing a KM capability in terms of firms’ accumulation of knowledge stocks and their management of knowledge flow. We conceptualize two forms of complementarity and consider the way in which the age of a KM capability determines which complementarity is relevant to the capability and performance relationship, specifically examining two disparate aspects of firm performance – efficiency and value creation.
Impacts of a KM capability on organizational performance were then empirically tested using data from 218 Korean firms that had implemented enterprise-wide KM systems. KM became important to Korean organizations after the foreign exchange crisis, which caused many to suggest that a national knowledge economy was needed. Before the crisis, the market capitalization ratio in Korean firms was 75% for tangible and 25% for intangible assets; in the knowledge economy that emerged following the crisis, this allocation was reversed, with 75% normally being allotted to intangible assets and 25% to tangible resources. This national-level attention to KM ensured that KM capabilities were considered by a firm despite variations in the KM capabilities across firms.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

7.1. The constitution of a KM capability
We began by conceptualizing a KM capability in terms of a firm's accumulation of knowledge stocks and regulation of knowledge flows. Then, we conceptualized the accumulation of knowledge stocks in terms of three knowledge reservoirs: human resources, technology infrastructure, and strategic templates, and the regulation of knowledge flows in terms of three identification processes: institutionalization, internal and external learning. Our data provides preliminary support for our conceptualization of the KM capability, with the accumulations of stocks and regulation of flows dimensions demonstrating convergent and discriminant validity and internal consistency. Further, the direct, positive effect of accumulations of stocks and regulation of flows on ROA and of flows on Tobin's q suggests criterion validity of the KM capability construct.
7.2. Synergistic complementarity of stocks and flows with respect to efficiency
We posited that knowledge stocks and flows would show a synergistic form of complementarity with respect to efficiency-based firm performance: this is seen in the presence of independent positive returns for each activity and super-additive returns in the presence of both activities. Independent positive returns were observed in the main effect of stocks and flows on ROA (Model 2 of Table 5). From Fig. 2, we see that the efficiency advantage of stocks was 3.8% (12.4% − 8.6%) enhancement of ROA and of flows with a 5.6% (14.2% − 8.6%) enhancement of ROA.
Our results also support the super-additivity of returns to combined investments. Following the significant interaction effect observed in Model 3 of Table 5, we examined the mean ROA for high- and low-levels of stocks and flows and observed the complementarity advantage to be an average ROA increment of 12.6%, compared to the collective independent advantages of 9.4% offered by stocks and flows (3.8% from stocks + 5.6% from flows). Thus, complementarity of stocks and flows yielded an ROA advantage of 3.2% over the ROA advantages that would accrue to independent investments. Thus, the complementarity of knowledge stocks and flows vis-à-vis efficiency was synergistic.
7.3. Initial contingent complementarity with respect to value creation
We posited that firms that had recently deployed a KM capability would show a contingent form of complementarity with respect to intellectual property Following the significant 3-way interaction effect among stocks, flows, and KM capability age noted in Model 5 of Table 5, the stocks × flows interaction for firms that had recently deployed a KM capability were plotted in Fig. 4a. High levels of investment in both stocks and flows was associated with a Tobins’ q that is 0.015 (1.585 − 1.570) higher than that associated with low investment levels in both stocks and flows. This, in turn, exceeded the Tobin's q associated with low investments in stocks and high investments in flows and high investments in stocks and low investments in flows, The performance advantage of high investments in stocks and flows relative to low investments in both stocks and flows, together with the performance decrement associated with low investment levels in either stocks or flows relative to low investments in both stocks and flows as captured in the X-shaped interaction plot in Fig. 4a suggests the contingent form of complementarity posited.
7.4. Complementarity over time
Observing challenges faced by companies implementing KM initiatives, Garud and Kumarawamy [7] said: “An organization's knowledge system contains seeds of its own destruction, as the very initiatives that the organization undertakes to generate a virtuous circle have the potential to generate vicious circles as well … knowledge managers must intervene to steer their organization's knowledge system around and out of vicious circles.” Our research suggested one specific way in which organizations’ KM systems can deteriorate. While effect sizes were somewhat small, stock-flow complementarities that engendered stable efficiency advantages and short-term value creation advantages compromised value creation advantages in the long run. Fig. 4b suggests that firms with mature KM capability investments enjoyed higher performance benefits from misalignments between stock and flow investment levels. Thus friction rather than complementarity, may be essential for innovation and the value of knowledge stocks may decay over time.
7.5. Adoption patterns: an alternate interpretation of the 3-way interaction effect
Since data for our study were cross-sectional, we were not able to rule out the possibility that high-performing firms’ KM capability investment levels differed systematically from those of low-performing firms. To allow for this interpretation of the interaction term, we considered the interaction term from a perspective of diffusion of innovation. In Fig. 4, while all correlations between stocks and flows were significant, the differences between the correlations of stocks and flows across high- and low-performing firms were early- versus late-adopters of KM capability. This suggests that high-performing firms had a level of friction in their deployments of the stock-flow components of their KM capability if they were early adopters. Maintaining such a slight disjuncture probably permitted them to evolve the KM capability more easily than would a complementary and tightly-coupled set of stocks and flows. Perhaps with the benefit of knowledge gleaned from others’ KM capability deployments, high performing late adopters sought out higher levels of complementarity in their deployments of their KM capability.